It’s been a rainy and cool May here on the coast, unlike in the prairies where 200 wild fires are ravaging communities and thousands of square kilometers of forests and grasslands. To the south, economic storms are being unleashed by a possessed and unhinged president, driven by greed, disinformation, nationalism and hubris. These are challenging times and we’re lucky to live where we are.

            ‘Have you ever heard of Peter Thiel?’ I asked Camp after we settled in our usual corner on the glassed-in veranda on the harbour.

            He professed his ignorance and for a change it was I who got to lecture him.

            ‘He is a German born billionaire but unlike Bezo, Musk and Zuckerberg he is not kowtowing to Trump. He is not the figurehead of a large corporation but he is above all the most dangerous of the tech billionaires. He is the central string-puller behind Trump’s first and second terms. 

‘How come I never hear of this guy if he’s that important?’ Camp said.

            ‘When Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, nobody took him seriously but Thiel immediately donated a million dollars to his campaign. He saw in Trump the best chance for radical change but only a trailblazer and a means to an end. Thiel’s plan is to overcome democracy and he is at the core of all the upheavals in the USA.’

            ‘That’s thirsty talk’, Camp said.

‘There is more and it’s scary in its scope. J.D. Vance worked for Thiel’s investment firm who financed his political career from the beginning. Thiel helped Vance get into the US Senate with 15 million dollars – and he introduced him to Donald Trump. Without Thiel neither one would be in their respective positions of power today.’

Camp just shook his head. ‘Unbelievable.’

‘Thiel was one of the founders of PayPal. He wanted to abolish state-controlled currencies and replace it with a politically controlled monetary policy but he failed and sold his share of the payment service provider. He was 30 and already very rich. He studied at Stanford and was disgusted by the progressive mood, although he himself is homosexual. He perceived the burgeoning political correctness he experienced on campus as an attack on freedom of expression. He then co-founded the contrarian and conservative ‘The Stanford Review’ and in 2004 bought 10 percent of Facebook shares seeing the potential to build a monopoly. ‘

‘What’s all that got to do with where we are today and the tenuous state of democracy,’ Camp said.

‘In the last ten years Thiel’s influence on the Trump-universe has grown and the seeds he planted in those early years have sprouted. For his strategy, he needs a compliant state. He sees his own actions as theologically motivated and himself standing up against the Antichrist, as in the apocalypse. In his worldview the Antichrist – democracy – is the enemy of freedom: the compromising alliance of the United Nations, NATO, the EU and so on. He sees them as the dictatorial oppressors of the world; democracy and liberalism weak and exhausted and rewarding incompetence. In Thiel’s own words, expressed in 2014: The great promises of technology remain unfulfilled and that is the fault of state structures. States therefore do not need elected parliaments and heads of state, but supervisory boards, CEOs or, alternatively, monarchs.’

‘Where do you get all this? Camp asked. ‘Peter Thiel, billionaire puppet master and the destroyer of democracy?’

‘From a podcast  which aired in six half-hour segments: ‘The Peter Thiel story’: Aspen leaves  At the security conference in Munich we heard Peter Thiel speak through J.D. Vance. The two of them have a plan and they will do everything they can to make it a reality. They have the means to do so.’

‘A sobering story my friend,’ Camp said, ‘which calls for an immediate refill.’

And just like magic, Vicky appeared with two fresh mugs of golden goodness.